Backwards / Forwards

This appears to actually be an official mashup, as it’s on Annie Lennox’s web site as well.

It is by DJ Earworm, including the songs Little Bird, SING, Why, No More I Love You’s, Shining Light, and Walking on Broken Glass, among others. This is a pretty cool mashup. Besides, I like Annie Lennox. She’s freaky. In a good way.

Japanese Shakespeare

I’m not really sure whether to classify this as a full post or a What the F*** for today, as it shares a little of both.

All I really know of this is that it is the opening to some sort of Japanese Shakespearean Musical. The ending has the same tune, only all the actors were ghosts.

Now here is “To be or not to be” turned into a song and dance number, the ‘Mondai’ song. Think this is the same musical. This has Tatsuya Fujiwara as Hamlet. I so wish I understood Japanese.

And here is Hamlet seeing the ghost of his father when trying to have sex with a fat Valkyrie. The kid has issues. ^_^

Lovecraft

Oh, I know what route I go down when I experience too much kawaii, too, Sean.

Admittedly, it first involves porting it here, where everyone can see it. But afterward, there are antidotes. In this case, I got together with a friend from work after work and played a board game he has with him called Arkham Horror.

Cthulhu won the first game, but we managed to beat an elder god the second time, though we house ruled one or two things. (Mainly because of only having two players.)

In honor of that, I thought I’d play a short creepy animation called A Lovecraft Dream. I think it speaks for itself.

Stomping At the Savoy

Sorry about not playing a follow up yesterday, but I was pretty much exhausted; I went to work straight from the airport getting back, which is not a good idea, especially when your work sleep schedule and vacation ones are different.

Back to the posts, I can stick with Tommy Emmanuel, I suppose. Here he is with Richard Smith at Glasgow, Scotland in 2006. The two of them performing together is amazing.

Initiation

Well, Sean, not to change topic from your Russian film festival, but I was at a festival myself today, Worldfest, and one of the musicians I saw was a rather unique guitarist named Tommy Emmanuel. He makes some rather unusual sounds with guitars (and also runs through them rather quickly).

One song requested that he didn’t play was a song called Initiation. I thought I’d play it here instead.

Always…

Well, I’ll keep with the theme for the moment. It’s worth noting that I go on vacation from Weds to next Mon, so after Weds post, my posts may be spotty, depending on Internet access, and if I have time, so theme may vary.

I haven’t really had time to prepare posts ahead of time yet, either, so we’ll see how it works out.

Today, though, I found an odd little tune of Thomas Dolby’s called May The Cube Be With You. I strongly recommend watching the (embedding disabled) original music video, but here’s a remix you can listen to.

And, yes, this song is unabashedly about drugs. Rated non-work-safe due to the comments at the end of this long remixed version, though.

Windmills

You know, sometimes everything just seems perfect to make a good followup post, and everything falls into place.

Other times, everything falls into place for a good post… but it has absolutely no relation to the previous post.

This is one of the latter. Not related to POS’s Goodbye, at all, unfortunately.

It is a song named Windmills of the Mind, written for the film The Thomas Crown Affair, and sung by Noel Harrison. And subsequently covered by lots of other people. This however, is the original. I like the whirling imagery.

The Muppets, however, decided to do their own entertaining take on the song. It’s faithful to the original idea in its own twisted way. ^_^

Actually, this song is very popular as an instrumental as well. Usually it sounds like a classical piece. Peter Nero decided to treat it as electronica, instead, though. It works. It definitely works.

I Started a Joke

What’s this I see? It’s Sean! I guess both of us were in a funk, just for different definitions of funk…

Though I’ll admit doing the blog solo for a bit was interesting, it’s more fun when we’re b0th here to bounce things off of each other. Even if it is more challenging.

Note to self: Sean apparently summoned by playing disco. Must experiment more with this in the future.

So, what to play after the Ramones…

Well, I was already thinking about playing this song sometime soon. It’s Robin Gibbs singing with the rest of the Bee Gees backing him.

This is one of these videos that is absolutely perfect in black and white. Color would have totally detracted from it. Robin’s voice is amazing here, the lyrics are interesting, and it all just comes together really well.

The song is I Started a Joke. As you can tell, it’s very up to interpretation, which is another part of why I like it. Besides, it’s a beautiful song, with a great delivery.

And I feel like posting the lyrics wholesale in this case:

I started a joke which started the whole world crying,
But I didn’t see that the joke was on me, oh, no.

I started to cry which started the whole world laughing;
Oh, if I’d only seen that the joke was on me.

I looked at the skies, running my hands over my eyes;
And I fell out of bed, hurting my head from things that I said.

Till I finally died which started the whole world living,
Oh, if I’d only seen that the joke was on me.

I looked at the skies, running my hands over my eyes;
And I fell out of bed, hurting my head from things that I said.

Till I finally died which started the whole world living
Oh, if I’d only seen that the joke was on me, oh no,
That the joke was on me.

Something’s in the air?

Ah, so that’s where you’d gotten to, Sean. You’ve been playing a teenage machine gunner while I was playing Teenage Prostitute. Ah well, it happens.

So now you’ve played Daft Punks Superheroes. And you know, I remember the post you did about Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. You talked a lot about music sampling in relation to it[1]. And having heard Superheroes, I think it’s a good time to play Barry Manilow. Specifically, Who’s Been Sleeping In My Bed?.

You heard the lyrics at the beginning, right?

I hope so, since Daft Punk repeated them over and over again in Superheroes.

And now you know what it takes to get me to play Barry Manilow on the blog. And here I was thinking of playing the Mama’s and the Papa’s as the likely consequence of a Teenage Prostitute and Easy Meat. Or just more Frank Zappa.

Perhaps next time.

[1] Which is one reason why I remembered it. I like that sort of thing.

Won’t Get Fooled Again

Ah. Christian Mad Scientists. Got it. I won’t be fooled again.

And neither will the Who.

This is the Who at The Concert for New York City[1]. Their drummer, Keith Moon, had died in 1978. Zak Starkey, a close friend of Moon’s (who was his godfather), has been filling in as their drummer since 1994, and is featured here. He also played with Oasis from 2004-2008.

Zaks father, Richard Starkey is pretty well known as a drummer as well, under the name Ringo Starr.

[1] The concert one month after 9/11, for charity. A lot of the audiance are members of the New York Fire and Police Departments, or family members of them.